The intersections of family, community, and social policy contexts, incorporating multiple methods and analytic techniques to assess their influence on child and adolescent development. Specific research foci: family structure and parenting; father involvement; family economic supports including welfare and work; youth health risk behaviors; childcare and early childhood education; and poverty.

Health Risk Trajectories Across Adolescence: Understanding Gender Differences (W. T. Grant Foundation). Coley, Principal Investigator; James Mahalik & Sara Jaffee, Co-Investigators. Assess how family and peer contexts affect the initiation and sustainment of health risk behaviors both directly and in interaction with genetic risks, with particular attention to gender divergence in such behaviors.

Socioeconomic Disparities in School Readiness Skills and the Role of Early Education and Care. (Spencer Foundation). Coley, Principal Investigator; Elizabeth Votruba-Drzal, Co-Investigator. Delineates the role of early childhood education programs in ameliorating or exacerbating economic disparities in children's cognitive and behavioral school readiness skills.

ARC Centre of Excellence for Children and Families of the Life Course (Australian Research Council). Baxter, Principal Investigator. Collaborative research centre seeking to advance basic, applied, and translational research to reduce intergenerational and long-term economic disadvantage and improve the life chances of poor children and families.

Recent Publications

Elliiott, M.C., Leventhal, T., Shuey, E., Lynch, A.D., & Coley, R.L. (in press). The home and the 'hood: Associations between housing and neighborhood contexts and adolescent functioning. Journal of Research on Adolescence.